Hulleye Comes By!

these are some of the best stats ever.

They have 32,000 major parts, 750,000 rivets, 23 miles of wiring and, when assembled, a pair will have a span wider than a football pitch. But if the wings of the Airbus A380, the biggest passenger plane ever built, are unprecedented in scale, it is the journey they take from north Wales to the company’s HQ in southern France that is truly astonishing. Aida Edemariam follows one wing on its epic voyage, and traces an extraordinary tale of engineering.”

When the A380 finally goes into service at the end of this year, it will carry about 550 people, making it the largest passenger aircraft ever to take to the skies. It is not the largest aircraft ever built (the Russian Antonov, a freighter, holds that honour), but at up to 35% greater capacity, it can claim to represent as titanic a revolution in commercial flying as Boeing’s jumbo - the 747-400 - was 36 years ago. Partly because of the unique challenges of its size (73m in length, the equivalent of seven London Routemasters queued nose to tail, and with a wingspan of 79.8m) and partly because of demands from airlines that planes should be quieter, less polluting and above all cheaper to fly per passenger, it has not been enough simply to tinker with designs for previous aircraft. Airbus went back to the drawing board and designed the A380 from scratch, which means it is also as major a technological achievement as Concorde. Being manufactured at 16 different European sites, however, using the skills of 1,500 suppliers in 30 countries, this singular aeroplane demands a level of international cooperation that the Concorde project did not even hint at.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

theres literally hundreds of algorithms for good passwords which people never seem to use. this is an intriguing solution to a problem of bad user passwords. it worked for me in the first go. fairly impressive i must admit. passclicks is a new way to login to websites without users having to remember their old style textual password. just save your password by clicking on 5 points, then login by clicking on those same points with a 7px margin error. fairly ingenious. any developers out here who can explain to me what the limitations of distributing this form of authentication is?

500 simple home do-it-yourself experiments for the nerdy minds from San Francisco’s Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception.

Their mission is best stated on their about page:

Our focus is on investigating the science behind the ordinary subjects and experiences of people’s lives. The topics themselves provide “hooks” that get people excited about science. Then, when we investigate these topics, we can also look at the historical and social issues surrounding them, thus providing a context for scientific exploration.

okay i have no clue what to say about this. not sure if i should be sarcastic or concerned or intrigued. this link points to some articles and a video about a family in Turkey that walks on all fours and communicates using a “primitive language.” it’s absolutely bizarre.

OoOOooOOoo….I want!!!

in light of a previous post about the banning of abortions in south dakota, a woman named Molly Blythe has posted an abortion manual for the women of south dakota.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, when abortions were illegal in many places and expensive to get, an organization called Jane stepped up to the plate in the Chicago area. Jane initially hired an abortion doctor, but later they did the abortions themselves. They lost only one patient in 13,000 — a lower death rate than that of giving live birth. The biggest obstacle they had, though, was the fact that until years into the operation, they thought of abortion as something only a doctor could do, something only the most trained specialist could perform without endangering the life of the woman.

They were deceived — much like you have probably been deceived. An abortion, especially for an early pregnancy, is a relatively easy procedure to perform. And while I know, women of South Dakota, that you never asked for this, now is the time to learn how it is done. There is no reason you should be beholden to doctors — especially in a state where doctors have been refusing to perform them, forcing the state’s only abortion clinic to fly doctors in from elsewhere.

No textbooks or guides existed at that time to help them, and the equipment was hard to find. This is no longer true. For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman’s anatomy you will not put anyone’s health or life in danger, even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.

A population milestone is about to be set on this jam-packed planet. On Saturday, Feb. 25, at 7:16 p.m. ET (that’s exactly 6 hours and 47 minutes from the time of this post publishing), the population here on this good Earth is projected to hit 6.5 billion people. Along with this forecast, an analysis by the International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau points to another factoid, Robert Bernstein of the Bureau’s Public Information Center advised LiveScience. Mark this on your calendar: Some six years from now, on Oct. 18, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. ET, the Earth will be home to 7 billion folks.

Even more striking is that the time required for the global population to grow from 5 billion to 6 billion — just a dozen years — was shorter than the interval between any of the previous billions.

On average, 4.4 people are born every second.

cool shit. malcolm gladwell, reknowned author/sociologist/economist of blink, and the tipping point has started blogging.

Reviews of 18 spring movies, and why you’d be a moron to see any of them.

The Da Vinci Code

IN A NUTSHELL
Tom Hanks stars as a rich, world-famous art historian who uncovers a mystery that could shake the planet to its core: that art history majors don’t actually grow up to be rich or world-famous.

WHY YOU SHOULD HATE IT
Making a suspense thriller that hinges entirely on a secret that, with some eight bazillion copies of Da Vinci Code in print, everybody already knows, might strike some as ridiculously needless. Ironically, these would be the people who were smart enough to avoid this poorly-written potboiler in the first place.

Mission: Impossible III

IN A NUTSHELL
America’s answer to the question “What would crazy look like if it was short and nailed Katie Holmes?”, Tom Cruise, reprises his role as Special Agent Ethan Hunt, making the world safe from possible missions one day at a time.

WHY YOU SHOULD HATE IT
A third installment of a franchise based on a television show based on other spy franchise movies is a lot like photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy of a cupcake, balling it up and eating it while I smack you for being so fucking stupid.

so for all those people who don’t mind the reality behind the humour, here is a guide to the corporate crapper. consider it the office space equivalent of the toilet.

well since you all know, i loathed the peter jackson version of king kong. so here’s the whole movie for you in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

01110011 01101001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110101 01110000 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101110 00100000 01101001 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100100 00101110 00100000 01101001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101110 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101111 01101110 01100111 00101110 00100000

possibly the best fight sequence EVER to the audio of fear and loathing.

guess who got married?!!! pathans the world over rejoicing. (damn, was that below the belt?)

Microsoft says that today’s release of the Windows Vista February CTP is “feature-complete”. Two new features are Sidebar and Welcome Center. Take an illustrated walkthrough of Vista build 5308 with these 53 screenshots.

Astronomers using NASA´s Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of two new moons around the distant planet Pluto.

The moons were first discovered with Hubble´s Advanced Camera for Surveys in May 2005, but the science team probed even deeper into the Pluto system on Feb. 15, 2006 to look for additional satellites and to characterize the orbits of the moons. In addition to verifying the reality of the moons, the observations also rule out the possibility of other satellites of roughly similar size orbiting Pluto inside the orbits of the two moons. The moons, provisionally designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, are approximately 40,000 and 30,000 miles away from Pluto…

The confirmation reinforces the emerging view that the Kuiper Belt, a swarm of icy bodies encircling the solar system beyond Neptune, may be more complex and dynamic than astronomers once thought. Pluto resides inside the Kuiper Belt and is about 3 billion miles from the Sun. Pluto was discovered in 1930.

The moons’ orbits are in the same plane as the orbit of the much larger satellite Charon (discovered in 1978). This likely means the moons were not captured, but instead were born, along with Charon, in what is commonly theorized to have been a titanic collision between two Pluto-sized objects over 4 billion years ago…

South Dakota lawmakers have voted to outlaw nearly all abortions, setting up the first direct legal attack on Roe v. Wade by a state in 14 years.

Abortion rights advocates across the country reacted with outrage and dismay. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which runs the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota, said it was bracing to fight the move in court immediately, if the governor signs it.

Some opponents of abortion rights celebrated what they called a bold and brave move and lauded South Dakota for taking the lead in what they said they hoped would become a series of states to challenge Roe, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal.

The shifting makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, the opponents said, offered a crucial opportunity, the first since at least 1992.

“It is a calculated risk, to be sure, but I believe it is a fight worth fighting,” State Senator Brock Greenfield, a Republican who is also director of South Dakota Right to Life, told his colleagues in a hushed, packed chamber here.

After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators Wednesday rejected exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of a mother and voted, 23-12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save a mother’s life.

They also rejected an effort to allow South Dakotans to decide the question in a referendum and an effort to prevent state tax dollars from financing what is certain to be a long and expensive court battle.

To be enacted, the bill requires the signature of Governor Mike Rounds, a Republican, who opposes abortion…

thomas pink, probably my favourite maker of shirts has just sold out. sad i am. sigh.

British shirt-maker Thomas Pink has begun selling a limited edition tie with an integrated iPod holder, the better to allow City gents to groove to their favourite beat combos as they battle their way to work every morning.

The £49 ($86) tie is bright red - ideal, perhaps, for the much-rumoured red AIDS-awareness iPod - and made from silk and nothing else. On the back is a small pocket in which to place the player, and there’s a handy cable tidy a little further up, closer to the knot.

via the reg.

i wonder who the choreographer for this film was. you guys got any clue what movie this is?

• windows narrowly bumps unix in the server market for the first time ever.
• yahoo bans, and then unbans Allah.
• a second security hole found in OS X within ten days.
• dumbass president of canada’s lakehead university bans wifi on campus because it’s not unproved that it’s dangerous.
• google images gets shut out by adult company, perfect 10.
• commodore ressurects itself.
• quantum dots talk to each other.

Chris Huntley analyzes “Serenity” via a software program called Dramatica Pro. Warning: May be too in-depth for some!

and then televisionwithoutpity does a recap of the film. and if you thought dramatica was in depth…you got one thing coming. “He stands, so illuminated it’s blinding, the harsh light of Miranda behind him like a halo: “I aim to misbehave.”"

the 2006 nba slam dunk contest. these are bad ass.

A Crash Course On Complexity, Emergence and Collective Intelligence.

via kottke.

the future seems doomed and damned.

Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology will present this research at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, HI on Monday, Feb 20.

Caldeira’s computer models have predicted that the oceans will become far more acidic within the next century. Now, he has compared this data with ocean chemistry evidence from the fossil record, and has found some startling similarities. The new finding offers a glimpse of what the future might hold for ocean life if society does not drastically curb carbon dioxide emissions…

and if that wasn’t enough.

New infectious diseases are now emerging at an exceptional rate, scientists have told a leading conference in St Louis, US.

Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year, they said.

“This accumulation of new pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired TB, malaria, smallpox… But at the moment, this accumulation does seem to be happening very fast. So it seems there is something special about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading the human population…”

and in other non-damning news….you know how you always wanted x-ray vision like superman’s…

Researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, have pioneered the technique which could be used to see through rubble at earthquake sites, or look at parts of the body obscured by bone.

The effect is based on the development of a new material that exploits the way atoms in matter move, to make them interact with a laser beam in an entirely new way.

via warrenellis

Jamaican man watches Cool Runnings, moves to Canada, wins silver medal in bobsled

Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, put the screws to Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco for their active role in profiteering from human rights abuses in totalitarian regimes around the world. The transcript on CNet is amazing and shameful; like many geeks, I identify to some extent with the people who make up these companies. It’s embarrassing to read their dismal defenses of raw greed at any cost:

here’s a snippet.

Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law…We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years? Have any of the companies reached out to these families and asked if you could be of any help to them?

Yahoo: We have expressed our condemnation of the prosecution of this person, expressed our views to the Chinese government…We have approached the Chinese government on these issues.

Lantos: Have you reached out to the family? I can ask it 10 more times if you refuse to answer it. You are under oath.

read the rest.

This all started because nearly every U.S. company with a Web site located in China will have to move it elsewhere or its executives would face prison terms of up to a year, according to proposed legislation expected to be introduced this week in the U.S. Congress. A draft version of the bill reviewed by CNET News.com represents the first serious attempt to rewrite the ground rules controlling how U.S. Internet companies may interact with foreign governments. If enacted, it would dramatically change the business practices of corporations with operations in China, Iran, Vietnam and other nations deemed to be overly “Internet-restricting.”

The highly anticipated proposal, created by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) in response to recent reports about censorship in China by Google, Yahoo and others, also makes it unlawful to filter search results or turn over information about users to certain governments unless the U.S. Justice Department approves. It would also impose new export restrictions to those nations.

“For the sake of market share and profits, leading U.S. companies like Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft have compromised both the integrity of their product and their duties as responsible corporate citizens,” Smith said at a related hearing in the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Smith, chairman of a human rights subcommittee, likened that cooperation to companies that aided the Nazis in World War II.

read the rest of this article here

Scans of the Victoria’s Secret catalog from 1977. Compare with the catalog from 2003.

the gif’s on you.

now this is something doc emmett brown would be darned proud off. now all we need is a flux capacitor and 1.21 ‘jigowatts’ of electricity.